he has written 31 books since 1959, including classics good-bye columbus, zuckerman outbound, the human stain, and i read most of them. in a three our sit down with "the new york times," roth provides fascinating insight into writing fiction. he said i knew i wasn't going to get another good idea, or if i did, i'd have to slave over it. i know i'm not going to write as well as i used to. i no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. writing is frustration, daily frustration, not to mention u mill agency. it is like baseball, you fail two-thirds of the time. i can't face any more days when i write five pages and throw them away. i can't do that any more. boy do i know that feeling. writing and good writing involves going to the keyboard again and again. >> i think i write as publish as often as i can bear being without a book to work on, but routinely when i finish a book, i think what will i do? where will i get an idea? and a kind of low level panic sets in. and then eventually something happens. if i knew how it happened, i would repeat the process, but i don't know, somethi